


Jealousy

by Melodious329



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-09
Updated: 2011-10-09
Packaged: 2017-10-24 10:59:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/262707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melodious329/pseuds/Melodious329
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>written for the livejournal kink meme 1stclass_kink for this prompt:  Raven and Alex do NOT get along. One day Raven catches Alex looking at Hank and calls him out on it thinking Alex is just being a dick (they're off to the side so nobody else can hear them) Alex's reaction is telling (blushing, "What? No, I was looking at... that tree...y'know, with the leaves...") and Raven figures out that he's gay. Basically, she calls him a faggot or something (It's the 60's, or maybe she's just shocked and upset because she's not getting anywhere with Hank, who happens to spend a lot of alone time with Alex in the bunker... Whatever. Just don't have her being a bitch w/o reason)</p><p>Anyway, Alex tells her to fuck off, angsts like crazy, and everyone is noticing the sudden increase in tension between the two. Hank calls Raven out on it one day ("What's up with you and Alex?") and Raven tells him that Alex has a thing for Hank. Hank pretends he's disgusted and they verbally bash Alex for a little. Alex overhears. More angst. Hank confronts him and confesses that he's gay too. They can get together or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jealousy

Alex sits on the grass in the sunshine, watching Hank make adjustments to Sean’s flying suit. But as Sean walks away, eager to fly again, Alex’s stormy blue eyes stay on Hank, his tall lean frame, cheeks pink from finally getting out of the lab and into the sun, full lips…  
Alex’s nervous fingers tug up clumps of grass. He shouldn’t look at other boys, he knows that. He’s heard that queers are ‘sick freaks’ enough that he knows he shouldn’t do that to Hank.

Particularly when he and Hank have reached an uneasy truce ever since Hank made that disc for his chest and they shared that look, and Hank smiled that smile at him. Recently, Alex has been hanging out in the lab after dinner. Mostly Hank talks at him, about things that Alex doesn’t understand, but he likes that look of excitement, of passion on Hank’s face, likes when Hank treats him as an equal instead of an idiot punk.

Alex never meant to pick on Hank. He doesn’t do it just because Hank is an easy target. Alex is mostly pissed at himself, frustrated at finding Hank attractive. And then Hank was so insecure. At what? Hank was a fucking genius and gorgeous and strong seemingly without even trying. So he had big feet? All he had to do to hide was wear shoes. How many occasions are there to go shoeless in public anyway? Though, Alex admits that he wouldn’t know the answer since he hasn’t really been in public in a while.

“Why are you staring at him?”

Jumping in surprise, Alex lets the mutilated grass fall from his fingers as he looks up into Raven’s blonde-haired, blue-eyed persona. She’s already scowling down at him in suspicion. Alex and Raven are really the only two that don’t get along. She hates him more than Hank does for the bozo comments. And he hates her because no matter what their mutations, she’ll always end up with Hank. And he’ll always end up alone.   
“You’re staring at him like a love-sick school girl,” she reprimands him.

His mouth drops open and his eyes widen before he has time to fully process that she’s just trying to goad him. But the guilt already shows all over his face. Her expression morphs immediately to shock and triumph even as he tries to deny it.

“No, I’m not…” he protests.

“You are!” she shrieks. “You’re mooning over Hank. You’re a faggot!”

She laughs a little, but it’s that word that galvanizes him into motion as his expression hardens and he pushes to his feet. He doesn’t look back at her or Hank as he stalks away.

Instinctively, Alex heads back to his room, locking the door, but it’s not the same as his cell in solitary. He’s angry and hurt, and terrified that those emotions will make him lose control, that he’ll burn down the whole mansion and everyone in it.

He’s the freak even in a mansion full of freaks. He has the power that kills people. He’s the faggot. He shouldn’t be here.

But Charles won’t kick him out. He’s too nice for that, too nice for his own good in Alex’s opinion. But once everyone knows, it’ll be   
different. And Alex is sure that Raven will eventually tell everyone. And then they’ll all treat him differently. They’ll avoid his eyes, keep their distance like he might infect them with his disease.

It’s how they should have acted from the beginning, how Alex expected them to act when they learned that he was in prison, when they saw his first demonstration of his mutation, when they saw what his mutation did to Darwin…

Alex chokes on his emotions, his eyes burning with tears that he’s trying desperately not to shed. He doesn’t get to cry for Darwin when he’s the one who killed the other mutant.

Rolling onto his stomach, he pretends he doesn’t feel the tear pooling in the corner of his nose. When he was in solitary, he’d lie face down on his bunk when he was upset, when the guards had hassled him or he’s had nightmares of planes and red rings of fire. In his solitary cell, there was nothing but earth and steel underneath him, no one to hurt.

But this soft bed on the second floor of a house filled with flammable objects isn’t the same. He didn’t even want to be here. When Charles and Erik came to his cells, the warden made him leave. But then Charles talked about how he could be a hero, that his power could save innocent people around the world.

And he stupidly believed it. But worse than that, he started to like this misfit team of mutant soldiers, care about them. And now they’ll hate him. He forgot for a moment (too long) that everyone leaves him, that every good thing that ever happened to him blew up in his face, often literally. He can’t afford to get close to people, because he can’t afford to lose control when he feels hurt when they leave.  
He stays in his room until Charles sends out his mental call to dinner. Despite considering skipping it, he can’t just avoid the team forever, not if they’re meant to fight together. He can only hope that Raven hasn’t had time to tell everyone yet.

Unfortunately, he gets to the kitchen at the same time as Raven. Warily, they enter the kitchen and take seats on opposite sides of the table, Alex next to Sean and Raven next to Hank.

“Dude, where were you today?” Sean starts as soon as Alex is seated.

“None of your business,” Alex responds sharply, too sharply. He can already feel everyone’s eyes on him, though he’s busy glaring down at his empty plate.

But Sean seems mostly undeterred as he continues sharing the day’s excitement. “You shoulda seen me, there was this…”

“I’ve seen you fly,” Alex snaps, interrupting.

“Alex, now…” Charles starts but is cut off by Sean retorting himself.

“What is up with you?” Sean asks, his voice sounding annoyed, but also hurt.

Alex doesn’t have a thing to say to that, but he jerks his head up as Raven speaks up harshly.

“Alex can’t take a little teasing, no matter how much he picks on others,” is her snapped response.

“You shouldn’t talk about things you know nothing about,” Alex snaps back.

Raven responds haughtily, “I know that…”

“Shut up!” Alex cuts her off.

Immediately, he’s pushing his chair back from the table. He doesn’t look at anyone as he rushes away again.

He can still hear them though, hear Charles meek attempt to call him back, Raven telling her brother to stay out of it when he asks her what’s going on. But finally he’s back in his room.

But he’s too amped up to lie down on his bed after earlier and he paces instead. He tells himself that he doesn’t feel bad for hurting Sean. It won’t be long before they will stop Sean from hanging out with him. They can’t let a faggot be around kids after all.

He’s heard it in every foster family he’s ever been with. Some simply whispered gossip or ranted at the television when homosexuality was mentioned. One family actively prayed for the souls of homosexuals, like they prayed for other sinners, murderers and rapists, filling Alex’s ears with speeches on how they needed protect themselves against such evil and temptation.

Alex always figured he might be evil, that his mutation was a sign that something is terribly wrong with him. But he never thought that temptation. Once another foster father saw him looking at another boy the wrong way and tore a strip off his back with the buckle-end of a leather belt. Course that foster father was always looking for a reason.

But despite everything, praying, beating, and belittling him, none of it changed anything for Alex, in Alex.

He wants to run away from this mansion, run away like he ran away from half of those foster homes, but he won’t. Because there’s a war coming and his is the only mutation among them that is intended as a weapon. He understands now. They do need him. They need him to be the one to kill, like he’s done before, while Erik is taking care of Shaw. He clings to that purpose even as he hates it.

He sits down momentarily on his desk chair. He’s hungry now, but he’s too afraid to go to the kitchen after storming out of dinner. But he can’t stay in this overly comfortable cell anymore.

He shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t. But he can’t stop his feet from heading down to Hank’s lab. Maybe Hank hasn’t heard yet, maybe this is his last chance to be with Hank before everything’s ruined.

But he can hear voices before he even gets to the door. He knows what he’ll see when he looks through that small glass window in the door.   
Raven’s there, sitting on the lab table next to the chair that Hank always sits at, sitting where Alex usually sits. She’s leaning over just enough that Hank can get a good view of her cleavage.

“What’s going on between you and Alex?” Hank asks, pushing up his glasses.

Raven shrugs, trying to seem casual but she leans down further like she’s telling Hank a secret. “Alex was eyeing you up like a perv earlier on the yard.”

There’s a pause then like Raven is expecting Hank to explode in understanding like she had done. But then she’s forced to spell it out. “Alex is queer,” she says.

Alex hears Hank suck in a breath before he asks, “What? Are you…are you sure?”

“Yes,” she says. And she reaches out a hand to rest comfortingly on Hank’s forearm lying on the desk between them. “I didn’t like the way that he was looking at you.”

Alex can feel the heat in his cheeks. Of course, Raven would use this as a way to get closer to Hank, to comfort her boyfriend. All at his expense.

“No, I don’t want…He’s just so masculine,” Hank says, like he’s trying to figure out a puzzle, like Alex’s life is just some huge math problem.

Raven snorts, seeming upset at the way Hank isn’t responding to her advances. “He’s too masculine, probably to cover it up.”

Hank laughs a little too and it feels like a punch to Alex’s chest. “Yes, perhaps that’s it, trying to act tough,” Hank continues. “And he went to prison…”

Alex pales at the mention, he can’t believe Hank would think that he liked it there with those men…

“Yeah,” Raven agrees readily. “That’s so sick, I can’t believe he’d want to have sex with another guy, with you! I mean, think about how two guys have sex,” she says and then shivers theatrically, an obvious cue for Hank to put his arm around her.

But Hank has never been good with subtle and he simply throws her a sympathetic glance as he continues to bash Alex. “That is…disgusting. He’s disgusting. Why would Alex want to be a faggot?”

That word just incenses Alex and he’s throwing open the door to the lab before he can stop himself. He knows now why he came down here. He actually hoped that maybe Hank would be ok with it, that he wouldn’t hate Alex because he was queer. Hank knew what it was like to be judged for something, Hank was the most insecure person here, maybe, maybe he would understand.

But that hope is dashed as Alex glares at them. And they look back at him in shock, but he doesn’t say anything, and neither do they. They’ve said everything that needed to be said before he opened the door.

Turning around, he runs away again, like he always does when he’s upset or scared or angry or any emotion that he fears will trigger his power. Sometimes the heat just surges up in his chest so fast…

He makes it inside the bunker. It’s too big in here, but it feels better, the knowledge that he can’t do any damage in here. It’s dark and cold and isolated just like his prison cell was.

He wants to just explode, but he grits his teeth and breathes through flared nostrils, trying to keep himself in check until he can grab the suit that Hank left in here for him. Already glowing red, he swiftly puts it on.

Because he’s a soldier now, a weapon. He takes aim at the middle model again. They don’t care about him, Charles with his kind eyes and talk of this being a home where mutants can always come. But not for mutants like him, he’s too dangerous, he might burn someone, kill someone, he might look at another boy or even kiss another boy inappropriately. His very thoughts are apparently a danger to others, his very existence as a faggot.

He’s getting exhausted at trying to aim the red beam and he wavers as he tries to stand on his feet. All three models have been decimated one by one. But he’s not through. He releases another red beam, driven on by images of his past.

He can see again the day that he got off the bus at prison, the leers of all the men there in their jumpsuits, the laughing of the guards, everyone taunting him, feel himself being pushed against the wall of the shower, hands on his wet skin…

He can see his foster mother, the one who had all of them pray every day for sinners. He can see the lady’s disgusted, horrified face when Alex snapped and said he was a queer, the screaming by all of the other ‘good’ children about how disgusting and sick he was…

He can see one of his foster father’s, smell again the stink of Scotch as the man yelled in his face, “You fucking faggot, you…I’m going to teach you a lesson, one you’ll never forget”, Alex can hear the swish of the belt through the air, feel the impact of the metal on his back, his thighs…

He can see again every red burst he ever let escape; the face of that boy right before he died, just a child, the screams of a foster father holding his burned, bloody hand because he’d been reaching out that filthy hand to touch a little girl, another foster kid, who died of burns later that week, the crashing of the stone walls of the prison shower collapsing, everyone scattering, the red blood swirling the drain…

Alex collapses hard on his knees. He’s breathing like he’s just run a marathon, sweat trickling down the side of his face, soaking his suit. But the images, the sounds, the past, it stays with him, always.

He tries to send out another beam, but nothing happens. Shocked, he looks down, like he should be able to see something. He can’t, but he can feel it, he feels…empty. The whole bunker is on fire as Alex crumples, passing out.

***

Groaning, Alex returns to consciousness. He has to blink a few times to figure out where he is. Everything’s dark around him and it smells vaguely of smoke. And he’s freezing, shivering, that must have been what woke him up.

His arms tremble as he pushes himself off the floor, but it’s his head that feels like a spike has been through it. Leaning against the wall, he feels around his hairline finding an egg-shaped bump on the side of his head giving him a raging headache. He feels vaguely like he wants to puke.

He waits til the urge passes and then pushes himself up to his feet using the wall. Unable to really see, he feels his way along the wall on shaky legs, eventually making it to the door. He wants to stop there, wants to rest, but he knows if he sits down he won’t get back up, so he pushes open the door and pulls himself up the stairs by the handrail. Then he uses the wall all the way back to his room.

Once inside, he collapses back to his knees again and crawls to the wastebasket, his exhausted muscles heaving but nothing comes up. It feels like a lot of work for nothing as Alex shoves the basket away and continues his desperate crawl to the bed. The plate on his chest is uncomfortable but Alex only feels it for a second before he falls back asleep.

He wakes up in the morning, but is still too tired to do anything besides go to the bathroom, strip down, and down a glass of water. He finally makes it out of bed around noon, but he stays in his room trying to avoid the others at lunch. He’s a little surprised that Charles hasn’t called him out yet, but the truth is that he’s not a child, and Charles has never tried to parent him for all his nosiness, for which Alex is grateful. He’s not really interested in having any more parents.

His stomach rumbles ominously while he’s showering, but he waits til about two in the afternoon until he sneaks down to the kitchen. He just doesn’t know what to do with himself now, but he knows he can’t really avoid them all until whenever time that they actually have to go do something. He needs to practice still.

As he waits, he finds himself focusing on this mission, getting impatient to do something useful, something to make all of this seem somehow not utterly pointless. He starts to think about how dangerous the mission might be. If he’s the one with the plasma blasts, maybe all of the enemies, mutants and humans will go after him. He starts to think about dying on the mission, going out in some blaze of glory. He wonders if Shaw redirected Alex’s power back at him, would it kill him? Would it negate how Alex is immune to his own power? There’s a kind of symmetry about that scenario that appeals to him. The idea of dying for something starts to appeal to him.

But he still has to deal with his other team members. In the end, he just switches some of his routine, using the weight room when he knows most everyone is outside running, running when everyone else is inside, going into the bunker when the others are scattered everywhere else. But he can’t skip dinner and he steels himself when the mental call comes.

But nothing happens at dinner. Alex keeps his head down and eats his food. Neither Raven nor Hank speak to him at all though Raven does plenty of talking at dinner. Charles asks him briefly about what training he did that day. It’s not like Charles had been watching him every second before anyway, not with the others to focus on.

It’s almost a non-event except that Sean doesn’t even look at him. That hurts as much as Alex knows it’s his fault. It’s always his fault so he doesn’t understand why he still feels hurt every time it happens.

After dinner, he goes straight back to his room, lying on the bed with a book on physics that he snatched from the library. Hank used to talk to him about physics, when he talked about Sean’s flying suit…

Alex practically jumps off the bed when there’s a knock at the door. He shifts to sit on the edge of the bed before he calls out for the person to come in.

When Hank walks in, Alex’s eyes widen in total shock and he only just thinks to tear his eyes away from the sight to look down at the floor. He doesn’t want the other mutant to get the wrong idea.

He hears the door shut, and he wrings his hands as he says coldly, “What d’you want?”

“I-I’m sorry,” Hank stutters out.

Alex shakes his head but doesn’t look up. “Don’t. Don’t apologize.”

“No, but,” Hank takes a step forward, but he stops abruptly. “I wanted to say, I mean…I’m…”

It’s clear what Hank came to say, and really, it’s not even that surprising. “You’re queer,” Alex says, resigned.

Hank doesn’t respond, but it doesn’t matter. The fact that he didn’t vehemently deny Alex’s words are corroboration enough.

Alex shakes his head again. Before, he was desperate for that, desperate for there to be someone here like him, desperate for Hank to be the one like him, for there to be even the possibility of someone who actually returned his feelings.

But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change anything now. Hank hates himself, his feet, his sexuality. Hank actually made fun of being queer, said Alex was disgusting when he might as well of been talking about himself.

“You wanted me to know, but you don’t want anyone else to know, particularly Raven,” Alex says.

It figures that Hank’s conscience would make him come here and apologize for what he said about Alex, but Hank doesn’t realize that as long as he hates himself, for his mutation, for his sexuality, all of those words he said are true. Hank hates Alex because he hates himself.

Hank scuffs his feet on the carpeted floor. Silence is Hank’s answer again.

“Get out,” Alex says, and though his voice is low, the words seem to expand to fill the space of the previously silent room.

Hank leaves. Just because Hank is gay doesn’t mean that Alex has an ally. It doesn’t mean that Alex gets a happy ending.

Nothing changes. Hank still pathetically tries to answer Raven’s flirtations and Alex keeps his mouth shut. The president makes an announcement on tv. Alex sees Raven sneak into Erik’s room late that night as he’s wandering, unable to sleep.

But the morning when they line up at the fighter jet Hank built, everything’s changed. The world’s changed. Alex waits, fidgeting as he tries not to puke or shit his pants in fear at the idea of getting on a plane again. He can’t remember his mother’s face, but he can remember her voice when she screamed out in horrible pain.

Hank’s changed. When he walks out, now blue and furry, Alex knows that his appearance isn’t the end of the change. Now Hank has no hope of hiding. The thought almost makes Alex giddy and he lets one side of his mouth curl up.

And Beast stands up for himself, growling when he thinks he’s being made fun of. But still, Alex isn’t quite expecting it when he explains that he really does think the new look is good and Hank grips the shoulders of his suit and yanks him forward, practically off his feet, yanks him into a close-mouthed kiss.

Alex is stunned, as soon as he’s released his fingers tracing over his tingling lips. It’s the first time he’s ever been kissed by anyone.   
His reverie is broken when Hank growls, “I’m queer,” to their quiet teammates and Alex’s face breaks into a smile so wide it hurts his cheeks.


End file.
